Cunningham Cross Report

Soup anyone?

Last weekend was my first cross race of the season, Cunningham Cross. I can't tell you how much I enjoy everything about cyclocross. The racing is intense and difficult and the environment is fun and friendly.

If you want to do well at a 'cross race, you have to have more in your bag of tricks than simple raw power, though that helps a lot. You have to handle your bike well, read an ever-changing course, and getting off and on your bike smoothly is a required skill you don't find anywhere else in the cycling world. I can't imagine there will ever be a day where I won't have some aspect of 'cross that could be improved upon.

After the race, it doesn't matter where you ended up placing so much, because now you get to trade stories about your race experiences with your competitors and there's always beer to be enjoyed and more racing to watch (unless you're a cat 1/2 whch won't be me for quite a while). And yet, even though it doesn't really matter where you placed, you (or is it just me?) always have that itch to do better next race, or to best that one competitor who keeps outpacing you (I'm looking at you David Cleasby!).

Cleasby and I crossing the ditch.

Since this race was my team's race to put on, my wife and I got there pretty early that morning and had been out at the course the night before helping to set up the course and helping to drain some cans of their beer. Being there early and the beers I drank the night prior probably wasn't the best race prep I could have done, but hey, it's 'cross! Rachel was put to work right away getting racers signed in and I somehow had the (mis)fortune of manning the microphone for the first half of the day. I've always had respect for the job Ryan Feagan does when announcing and this experience only reinforced that respect!

About two hours before my race, I ditched the microphone and got kitted up in our new team jersey and started getting warmed up. I'm not the type of rider who can go super hard off the line without a good warm-up. So, I did my best to get a few really good 30 second to 1 minutes all out efforts in during my warm-up. My legs seemed to be okayish, though it's hard to tell when you're riding on 33mm knobby tires with not much air in them. Everything feels harder than it should on pavement. I'm sure the beer the previous evening had no influence on that...

Everything is more dramatic in black and white!

With a few minutes to spare, I got one more lap of the course in (except the muddy section) and rode up to the start where just about everyone was already lined up. I wasn't really worried about getting there early since there are usually call-ups anyways. I don't know if they did call-ups before I got there or if they didn't do them at all at this race, cause I never heard them. I knew I should have shown up to the line earlier. Maybe I could have weaseled my way into the front row. Live and learn I guess.

It only took about a third of a lap for the consequences of my poor starting position to rear their ugly heads. There was a nasty set of twisties that you could really only take in single file. As you might imagine (click here if you want to actually see it) it didn't take long for everything to jam up in there with at least two guys falling down ahead of me in line. By the time I got through the twisties, the leaders were way up the road and that was really all she wrote as far as my attempt at getting on the podium.

The ground here was so bumpy!

The race was far from over though. David Cleasby and a couple other guys and I were still together and it sounded from whoever was announcing that we were racing for fourth place. At some point in the second lap, Dave started pulling away from me on the bumpy power sections and the mud and I wasn't able to use the technical section to bring him back enough anymore so it ended up coming down to me and another racer (Alex Stephens) from the Midwest Cycling Club. We battled back and forth for most of the last two laps. He seemed to be slightly stronger on the flat sections and much faster running through the mud, but I was better in the corners and climbed the big climb faster.

Splish splash!

Like I said, Alex was faster than I was running through the muddy section. On our last time through the mud he passed me but then gave me the perfect opportunity to put to use some cornering tactics I learned at Mark Savery's cross clinic a few weeks ago. At the end of the muddy stretch, there was a left hand 180° turn. As we remounted our bikes, Alex continued on the path he was on meaning he started his turn from a pretty tight position. I saw this coming and proceeded to swing wide and apex my turn a little later so I could cut inside him when he had to exit the turn wide. It was beautiful and I think I deserve a gold star from Savery next time I see him!

I held Alex off through the barriers and down the path and then hammered it up the climb knowing he had been riding that a bit slower than I had been. Sure enough, I was able to get a pretty good gap which gave me some breathing room through the last bit of technical corners and into the final flat section. I could tell he was gaining back on me here, but it is really hard to pass in those final few corners and so he had to try and out-sprint me coming out of the final corner. I clicked it up a couple of gears before the last corner and sprinted as hard as I could. He came around me somewhere around the line. It was basically a photo-finish and neither of us could tell who had crossed the line first.

Everyone's bikes were a mess by the end of the day. The mud wasn't so bad to clean, but the grass clung to everything!

It was really good to be able to have some good head-to-head competition for those last couple laps. In previous races, by the last lap, I've been pretty much by myself. Having someone pushing you and forcing you to be aware of tactics in the midst of the tunnel-vision of a 'cross race made the race come even more alive for me. Very cool.

When the results sheet came back it showed that I had just barely edged out Alex for 5th place. I was something like 3 hundredths of a second ahead of him. It had to have come down to who had their timing chip on their forward ankle at the finish. What a great race! Next time I hope I will have a better starting position and then have a better chance of vying for a podium spot. These juniors coming up through the ranks are making it really hard though! lol I seriously told my wife that my new season goal is to beat Cole Limpach at least once, and that will be a challenge!

After I got changed out of my muddy kit, I got some of my stuff packed away and grabbed a few delicious beers courtesy of Brickway Brewery & Distillery and went to watch and cheer on the P/1/2 riders with Rachel. We watched, surprised, as some guy we didn't recognize rode away from Savery (turns out this guy was on the Hincapie continental road team and spent a couple stints over in Belgium with USAC's Euro 'cross camp) and we enjoyed all the fun that is 'cross spectating. There was beer, gummy worm hand up, and a gorilla masked Emily Houtchens offering banana hand-ups. It all made for a wonderful day of racing and watching racing.

My plan for the season was to do the full Omaha Jackrabbit gravel race (125 miles of gravel) on October 17th and then switch back to 'cross mode for the Star City CX and the Bellevue GP in November for a total of three 'cross races. But after the fun of last weekend, I decided to suggest to Rachel that we load up the kids and head to Lincoln for the Friday night Flatwater race on the 16th and then head down again the next day as well, skipping out on Jackrabbit. She had so much fun at Cunningham that she didn't even hesitate to agree to that idea even though it will mean getting the kids up early from their naps and extra coordination with Grammy. I told you 'cross was fun!

I'm hoping that with two more races than I had originally planned, that I will be able to garner enough points to upgrade to cat 3 for next year. My 5th out of 23 last weekend got me 1 point which puts me 10% of the way to my upgrade. While I know cat 3 will really kick my ass, I'd rather have a 45 minute race than a 30 minute one (or 24 minutes for that matter. #thanksdarrell) since I can usually just feel myself getting into a good rhythm at around 15 minutes in.